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In hearings about Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate scandal, Sam Ervin famously asked in an exasperated and a time-to-tell-the-damn-truth tone:

“What did the President know and when did he know it?”

Today, we have a (way) lower bar. So low you might not know you are stepping over it.

So we ask:

“How could AGENT ORANGE not know that being POTUS would be hard?”

Trump startled the world by his statement that he didn’t think the presidency would be as hard as his previously cushy life. The one in which he inherited wealth and if he had put it in mutual funds, he would be 10 or more times as wealthy as he is. Which means he sucks as a businessman. Be leave that for another blog.

I want to focus on his not thinking that the presidency of the United States would be so hard.

Stupidity in this instance is a high crime and misdemeanor. In other words, an impeachable offense.

The buck, as Harry Truman famously said, stops at the desk in the Oval Office.

What a president says can move markets, and worse, nuclear warheads.

What a president does can affect industry, employment, climate and international relations.

What a president decides can put our brave military men and women in harm’s way, and can kill innocent civilians.

What a president orders can separate families, divest hard working people of their medical insurance, and wipe out preschool for working parents.

With enormous power, privilege and wealth come profound responsibilities to the citizens of this country, those who live within its borders and the world at large.

Or he can enrich his cronies. Which his tax plan does.

For a president elected by accident, some humility is in order. And he should stop enriching his businesses by making the government pay for Secret Service to accompany him to his properties. And he should stop talking about chocolate cake while he bombed an empty air force base in Syria which he thought was Iraq.

And he ought to play less golf. Because he can’t bluff his way through complicated trade treaties and military alliances.

WARNING TO ALL WHO VOTED FOR AGENT ORANGE:

You deserve to be deported as enemies of the State. I will take an undocumented person working in the fields or a restaurant kitchen over you. You don’t deserve the citizenship that is your birthright. You forfeited that right when you elected Agent Orange.

And for those of you whose family comes from Eastern Europe, I hope you are choking on the Russian scandal.

God bless the United States of America and all of its inhabitants. May we survive this presidency.

Forgive me the historical inaccuracies; I am going from memory on this one.

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When I was a kid, the common apocalyptic prediction was annihilation courtesy of the escalation of a routine dust-up between the US and the USSR (remember?) that literally went nuclear.

We fought proxy wars — the Korean Conflict, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War (and used chemical warfare — specifically Napalm and Agent Orange even though our own troops were in harm’s way). Oh, and there were always “misunderstandings” along the Berlin Wall.

In the 1960s, Mr. Kruschev famously promised during a visit at the UN, “We will bury you!” He was referring to the US.

And the years spun by. Kruschev was followed by Brezhnev, followed by Andropov (for a second), followed by Chernenko (for another second) and followed by Gorbachev (who had the map of the Soviet missiles set as a birthmark on his forehead — see SNL skit from 1985). And Kennedy to Johnson to . . . . Reagan.

And the USSR was showing signs of age.

Then Perestroika led to Glastnos (or vice-versa). Then the Berlin Wall came down and, ultimately, so did the USSR.

And Yeltsin emerged. As the President of Russia. Still controlling some of the former soviet socialist republics.

But, for a moment in time, in that way that only Americans can (as if looking out to the great frontier), we decided not to worry about the unguarded nuclear arsenal of the former USSR, and bask in the serenity that nuclear war was not our existential threat.

Then we realized that it was easier having only one “enemy”. Because who is minding the nukes??

And then we remembered that India had The Bomb. And the US gave Pakistan the information to make The Bomb. And Israel . . . . And Iran started . . . . And, of course, China must have had it for soooooo long.

And there were also the WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction). Which includes, I think, Dirty Bombs and Chemical Warfare and a whole host of other horrible killing vapors and explosions on a massive scale. Maybe I am getting my jargon wrong, but you get the idea.

But we are Americans and we bluster forward. If you asked a New Yorker, we would have prescribed sedatives. (New Yorkers are an untapped psycho-pharmacological resource.)

And then Putin succeeded Yeltsin.

And many nations continued to acquire WMDs. And then not just nations, but terrorist groups spread far and wide acquired them.

And then we invaded a country that we knew had them (because we sold them to its leader) but he had already sold them to another leader. Yep, Saddam Hussein sold them to Bashar Al-Assad.

Yep. The guy who gasses his own people (as distinct from Sean Spicer’s Holocaust Centers).

And all the while Iran is getting closer and closer to the prototype of The Bomb. Meanwhile China sits by while North Korea actually tests prototypes of The Bomb.

And our 44th President gets us out of Iraq, because it was time and Iraq would no longer grant our soldiers immunity. He negotiates with Iran. He uses military force sparingly. Perhaps too sparingly sometimes. He draws down troops from Afghanistan, because that war is unwinnable. In the middle, he hunts down and kills terrorist masterminds, including Osama Bin Laden. I don’t love his search and kill missions. But I respect his decisions because I know he respects the rule of law. And I believe that he did what he thought was right after hearing from experts and sober deliberation

AND THEN COMES AGENT ORANGE 2.0. WORSE THAN NAPALM AND THE ORIGINAL AGENT ORANGE COMBINED.

Agent Orange 2.0 acts like he doesn’t know what he is doing. Maybe he is doing the mad man act to bring rational (fr)enemies to the table. Or maybe it is not an act.

And maybe what is old is new again.

And maybe the new apocalyptic prediction of annihilation will be a dust-up of egos that literally goes nuclear. Because Agent Orange 2.0 is {gasp} the — um — um — nope can’t do it. Can’t say it. Okay, he is 45.